Jeju Island, Korea
October 4-8, 2004

Inexactness and Robustness in Cepstral-to-Formant Transformation of Spoken and Sung Vowels

Frantz Clermont (1), Thomas John Millhouse (2)

(1) University of New South Wales, Australia
(2) University of Sydney, Australia

Accurate measurement of formant frequencies is important in many
studies of speech production and perception. The mapping of
formant frequencies from cepstra coefficients by Broad and Clermont
(1989) is an important evolution in formant estimation techniques
from previous studies. This method also holds significant potential
in estimating formant frequencies of sung vowels due to its improved
robustness over traditional formant tracking techniques. The
employment of this method in the estimation of formant frequencies
from a dataset of spoken and sung phonation has led to some findings,
not only on the inexactness of the model, but also on the resonant
nature of the sung and spoken vowels themselves.